I have started working for a company called Big Stone who are agents for Arcteryx clothing and Five Ten shoes. Both of which I am very fond of and am actually sponsored by for rock climbing! So it seemed quite appropriate to get a job offer here, I have started doing marketing and a bit of graphic design for them full time.

So my first big project was to design a leaflet for Ellis Brigham’s, advertising an Avalanche talk going on in their stores. This had to be done in a typical Arcteryx style, so to put it simply a clean and simple layout. If you check out the website you will get the idea, www.arcteryx.com.

Below you can see my final layout design that got put into print, 20,000 copies of these were sent out to stores and 60,000 emailed. The layout is a simple A4 folded in half to create a mini booklet and I also created a poster following the same style.

Flyer Outer

The left hand half is the back of the leaflet with the fold being down the centre and the right hand side is the front.

Flyer inner

The same applies to this with the fold being down the centre, but this shows the inside of the leaflet. The left hand page contains the talk information and right, product info and spec.

“We gave Katy a brief to design a mailer to attract graphic design agencies: She interpreted the brief straight away and produced a really effective design that will enable us to grow our business by showing potential clients exactly what we do.”

Haydn, Carlton Press, 01142 754258

I have been doing a bit of freelance work recently for a printing company in Sheffield. They wanted a mailer to send out to design agencies that promoted the printing and die cutting work available to customers. The design needed to reflect the traditional heritage behind the company but also be a little bit different to get noticed at design agencies when it came through the post.

The criteria:

1 or 2 colour litho printing

Incorporate die cutting / letterpress

A5 or something larger that can be folded down

Below are some sketches of initial ideas. We decided to go with the vertical sleeve idea as it was a little different and it incorporated die cutting by having a small window on the front. The sketched logo from the bingo ticket idea (top left) felt most appropriate along with the correct typeface to give the design the ‘traditional’ feel.

I managed to hit the nail on the head with the design pretty quickly… I was expecting more back and forth with emails and designs.

This is my finished design that I have left with Carlton Press, they will be making a few small tweaks to text and then send me the finished and printed mailer.

I am excited to see it all done and will post some photos of it when I receive one.

Front and back of the outer sleeve

So this image shows the sleeve opened out flat, the left hand side is the front and obviously the right side will be folded behind to make the back of the sleeve and glued together with tabs.

Below shows the inner which will pull out of the sleeve and contain all the relevant information. The idea is that as you slowly pull the inner out all the words in grey will pass through the window (cut into the blue sleeve) and you can read one by one what the company specialise in whilst sampling their printing and die cutting.

I saw in a friends studio an amazing line drawing by Kid Ache of all the ‘famous’ buildings in Sheffield.

I thought I would try and do my own but include some of my favourite buildings or places I have visited alot in Sheffield. This project has been going on for a little while now because at the most I can only do an hour at a time because you have to concentrate so much and it is extremely annoying when you make a mistake.

It still isn’t finished but below gives you an idea of what I am doing…

I have been keeping myself busy the last few weeks with some freelance work.

I did have some packaging design work lined up with a company but (due to a lack of work for me) it didn’t go ahead which I was very gutted about because I loved working for them.

My Grandma published a book a few years ago called ‘The Family of Landless’ which sold out and went out of print. She wanted it re-publishing so I was given the job! I assumed after some googling that it would be pretty simple to do as there seemed to be a number of websites which provided templates and you could simply drop the text into it them. After attempting to do this on three different sites I gave up on this idea, the templates gave me no freedom to do what I wanted, even to the extent of centering certain text (which maybe I should of expected since I was using a template). In the end I decided to bite the bullet and use InDesign, I had been avoiding this idea because I had never used it before but I picked up the basics fairly easy since I can use Illustrator and Photoshop. At uni we never really had lessons on how to use any of these programs, which I found really hard to start with but in the long run I think it is way better to teach yourself because you actually remember it!

I downloaded a basic template for InDesign from ‘blurb’ which gave me the dimensions, gutter etc. and got to. I had a few bits I struggled on but it actually went well and I learnt how to use a new program. The book is currently in the process of being printed so we will have to see what the test copy looks like and if there are any tweaks I need to make when it come back in a few weeks.

Whilst developing my previous logo design I also started playing around with a new design. I started trying to incorporate an olive tree into my design by replacing the L with a tree trunk. After alot of sketching different trees this is what I came up with…

…unfortunately and totally by accident my tutor pointed out it resembled a similar logo for ‘adopt an olive tree’ . Slightly annoying since I really liked the design. So I thought about changing it for a different style of illustration or replacing it with an olive branch.

I tried both:

The trees look to spindly and the left hand olive branch uses to much green and doesn’t take up enough of the background. The clear favourite is the right hand one, the orange colouring would look nice printed in gold and create the premium feel the design is looking for.

So now is the choice between the two final logo designs…

They both do as I intended; give off a Greek vibe whilst also competing with other upmarket and premium products. I am going to use the left hand image though as I think the olive branch creates a more direct link in a consumers mind to a greek product and the green on the leaves gives it a fresh feel.

The products need to look modern and stylish to attract the correct target market but still reflect the traditional greek culture.

I looked for inspiration in the architecture and old greek pottery. The shape of the bottles are inspired by the greek jugs and pots that have broad shoulders leading down to a narrow base (see image below.).

One of my initial ideas involved using a black and white image of greek architecture and spreading it across three bottles, so when placed together the customer would get a full landscape.

I like the idea of it but when put into practice the image would just curve around the bottles and it would be hard to tell what was actually printed onto them.

I started looking a type and how it could represent this Mediterranean feel. I came up with these hand rendered designs…

The olive oil design works well but the honey type doesn’t have the same affect, I experimented alot with this design but couldn’t get it to work. I decided why does it actually need to say what product is contained in the pot/bottle, if it is see through surely it is obvious? So why not just have the deli logo on the front instead…

So my next idea was to write ‘deli’ or ‘greedy greek’ in this same Mediterranean style. Below shows some of my initial ideas.

Here (below) it begins to work as a logo. I was experimenting with colours trying to use typical ones associated with Greece like blue, white and terracotta. I don’t think these colours are working to well though, it is not giving off a premium vibe. Maybe using black, white and gold might create this feel.